Nothing says “Happy Thanksgiving” like the killer turkey movie called ThanksKilling. The TC trio brings you a special episode this week with a whole lot more flavor than just a film review. They also interview one of the leading actors from the film “The Nerd” Ryan Francis. So while you driving across the country to eat a fowl dinner pop this show in. Hell even if your family is coming to you hit the play button to make them go home faster!

We now have a way for YOU to be part of the show. Just call our voicemail and leave a message! 765-396-8666

My grandfather, Col. Herbert E. Carter (USAF, Ret.) died Thursday afternoon at the East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika. He was 95. He is survived by his three children, including my mother, and an ever-increasing number of grand- and great-grandchildren, all of whom are slowly but surely making their way down south this week. Including me.

I’ll be waking up at 4 a.m. to catch a flight out on Tuesday for the funeral, and remaining as long as my mother needs. Obviously, this will cause some disruptions around here, as I’ve no idea what, if anything, I’ll be able to produce from the road. So I thank you in advance for your patience and understanding in these times. Any donations to the family may be given to Cecil, as usual.

Of all the disappointing third acts in all the trilogies in film this is my measuring stick. Let others pitch a bitch about Ewoks, Bruce Wayne’s mysterious teleportation powers, or whatever the hell it is you all hate soooo much about Godfather III. I always come back to The Creature Walks Among Us, a film almost as depressing as the era that created it. Made for the sole purpose of matching Revenge of the Creature‘s million dollar take, Walks Among Us isn’t the worst third act of a trilogy I’ve seen…but it is the shoddiest, the least-thought-out, and the most mind-bogglingly off-putting. The kind of movie that makes you shout, “What idiot signed off on this?” A movie that dares you to find something good about it, making the presence of a few genuinely good things almost painful. If they weren’t there I could hate the movie outright and maybe then it would stop haunting me.

Sure, 1956 was the year Godzilla first came to America, but most cinephiles choose to remember it (if at all) as the year of The King and I or The Ten Commandments. Big, loud, annoyingly long epics were the blockbusters of their day and it’d be seven years yet before Cleopatra finallyproved their day was done. Everyone else’s budgets shrank to accommodate their excesses and Universal’s monster movies were no exception. The studio that basically built Horror as a genre now contented itself releasing stuff like The Mole People…and this. Demonstrating they’d learned nothing from the 1940s.

Once again: a rushed production plus a reduced budget equals a bad movie. A string of bad movies equals a franchise no one remembers, save as a punchline. The problem’s exasperated when your title character is so one-note, even compared to his elder brothers in the Universal stable. Dracula usually wanted blood. Werewolves usually want cures. Mummys usually want some artifact or the reincarnation of their dead girlfriend. Frankenstein’s monster just wants to be left alone…something he and the Gillman have in common. All of Gilly’s movies hinge on invasions of his domain by hairy man-animals and their hot girlfriends…but unlike Frankenstein’s monster, you can’t keep bringing the Gillman back to life. Continue reading The Creature Walks Among Us (1956)→

The Future of Law EnforcementHaving worn ourselves out with Hitchcock, the Traumatic Cinematic crew retreats to back into our generation’s comfort zone with the greatest film of 1987 (says me, that’s who): RoboCop. See…whatever your mind’s eye can conjure up since it’s a podcast and there’s nothing visible about it. Hear the gang react to some trailer for some damn remake of something…I chose to forget what, just now. Feel left out if you don’t visit Traumatic Cinematic on Facebook, follow Traumatic Cinematic on Twitter, send your love and affection to TraumaticCinematic [at] gmail [dot] com, and Don’t forget to check out TraumaticCinematic.com

Comic book companies of the time were contractually obligated to replace at least half their pages with this ad. Every month. For a whole year.

Wasn’t the ad campaign for this game a horrible lie, even by the standards of ad campaigns?

Okay, okay, I’m going to come out and admit that it’s not fair to call Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest a bad game, not in a strict sense anyway. It set out to provide a basic, watered-down introduction to console RPGs and, honestly, it achieved that goal quite well. But at the same time it represented what was probably the most condescending message a company ever made to its own fanbase. Square was basically proclaiming to Americans, you all can’t handle our real product (which in this case would be Final Fantasy V) so we’re going to give you a version that’s more up to your speed – and that speed would be somewhere along the lines of a golf cart with a defective engine. Hell, when they released the game in Japan they even titled it Final Fantasy USA. Square might as well have subtitled it “This is what Americans think a RPG should be! Ha ha! They embarrass us by buying our games!”

Now I’m sure there were other elements to Square’s decision. Like the ad emphasizes, Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest was also cheaper, selling for $40 at a time when most RPGs for the Super Nintendo ran in the $50 – $60 range. But, trust me, you could see where you saved that money. The game didn’t even have its own graphical signature; most of the graphics were souped-up and colorized from Final Fantasy Legend III. You could also pretty much beat the entire game in a day or two of even casual playing, which was great if – like me – you made a habit out of renting video games and even RPGs for the weekend (P.S. I still curse the assholes who always erased my saved games when they rented the games before I could!), but not so good if you bought it expecting something like the 40 hour minimum players could expect to put into Final Fantasy IV. Continue reading Trash Culture’s Final Fantasy Retrospective Part 5: Mystic Quest→